The Unincorporated Woman (34 page)

“We’ll destroy each section of his fleet,” explained Sinclair, “before they can maneuver around Slingshot’s trajectory.”

J.D. nodded. “Exactly.”

“Give my compliments to Admiral Hassan. He played his part well.”

“Let’s see, now: ‘battle crazed maniac prone to flying off the handle.’” She laughed. “To tell you the truth, Admiral, I’m not sure he actually ‘played’ a part at all.”

“Good point. You ready to finish this thing?” J.D. looked like she was about to say something, but closed her mouth and simply nodded her affirmation. Sinclair looked toward Hildegard. “Secretary Rhunsfeld, fleet command orders the deployment of Project Slingshot with the directive to wipe out anything in the effective radius and range of the Via Cereana rail gun.”

Hildegard simply nodded and, without a word, got up and left the Cabinet Room followed by a gaggle of assistants brimming with excitement. J.D. gave a perfunctory salute, and her image disappeared from the holo-tank. After that the meeting was effectively adjourned. As the last of the crowd thinned out, only Sandra remained, strenuously poring over Project Slingshot’s tech specs. She’d already known about the project—Sebastian had informed her as much. What she didn’t know was whether or not it would work. As she reviewed the data, a saying from the twenty-first-century author W. S. Anglin kept playing through her head: “Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost.”

UHFS
Atlanta

It had been only ten minutes since she’d gotten off the comm link with Trang, but they’d been the longest ten minutes of her life. Worse than any of the fighting at the Battle of Eros or even the brutal engagements that had come to define Trang’s scorched-rock policy in their march on Altamont. She’d been prepared to die but had never anticipated that before death’s door there’d be a waiting room. What made each and every one of those minutes so excruciating was having to look at the faces of all those she’d led to disaster. How clever she’d been to memorize their wives’, husbands’, and children’s names. How very personable of her to know all their anniversaries, lifedays, and other significant markers. How thoroughly she now pictured the familial branches of a tree whose roots were about to be cut.

“Admiral.”

Zenobia’s head remained rigid, but her eyes steeled themselves on the sensor officer. “Yes, Congraves.”

“Unusual readings from Ceres, sir.”

“Transfer to my module and relay to Admiral Trang.”

“Transfered and relayed, sir.”

“Any ideas, Congraves?”

The sensor officer shook his head. “Whatever’s creating it is huge.”

“Location.”

“Ceres, sir.”

Now she turned her head to face him directly. “Can you be more specific?”

“The Via Cereana, sir.”

Zenobia turned to face her weapons officer.

“It looks like—” A pause followed on his words as he scanned his readings in disbelief. “—like the energy signature for a
rail gun,
but the size … I don’t see how it’s possible.”

Zenobia stood up and walked the short distance to the weapons officer’s module. He could’ve ported her the info, but he had more tech toys and could use them to explain his findings more clearly. “Are you telling me,” Zenobia grunted, now hovering over his shoulder and staring into a holo-display of Ceres’s famous throughway, “that the enemy has somehow managed to stuff a huge rail gun in the Via Cereana?”

“No, sir,” said the weapons officer, fingers flying about the panel. “What I’m saying is—” His fingers came to a sudden stop as the image of the weapon they were now staring down the barrel of came into view. “—the Via Cereana
is
the rail gun.”

UHFS
Liddel

Admiral Trang stared at his console and laughed inwardly. He’d been so proud of not having taken J.D.’s bait, it was only now he realized she hadn’t needed him to. He’d foolishly believed that her singular intention had been to destroy his fleet, when all along it had been something far more simple, though equally as deadly—she’d wanted to split it. And now he was trapped. Given the range and arc of the new weapon, he and Gupta had no choice but to run. And the farther they each ran, the farther apart they got. Long before they’d be able to link back up, Black would unify her fleet and fall on each one of them like a pack of hungry wolves. The only option available to him now was hope. Either he or Gupta would somehow have to make it back to Mars with enough of a force to defend the capital against a resurgent J. D. Black.

His only consolation was the near certainty that he wouldn’t be alive to face the shame. Yet another in a long line of admirals outsmarted by J. D. Black. After Zenobia’s flotilla was obliterated, J.D. would concentrate on killing him above all others. It’s what he would do in her place.

He activated the control giving him a secure communication link to Abhay Gupta. “Figured it out, Abhay?”

Gupta laughed grimly. “You may not be familiar with this part, Sam, but I sure as hell am. This is where we run our asses back to Mars.”

“Not ‘we,’ friend. ‘You.’”

Gupta nodded without argument.

“When you get back,” cautioned Trang, “be prepared. Black may have some other surprise that’ll make a Third Battle of the Martian Gates a possibility.”

“Sam, there may be no need. After this debacle, I don’t even think Sambianco will be able to keep the war going.”

“Just get home safe, Abhay,” said Trang. “The rest will have to take care of itself.”

Bump Station TCM-5, Via Cereana

Hildegard Rhunsfeld’s eyes took in the control room. It was a moderately sized space of ten meters by ten meters. Although it looked exactly like any of the other 499 similarly apportioned rooms, it was different in one respect—this one controlled all the others and so, in effect, became the trigger of the biggest gun in the solar system.

After the two technicians recovered from the shock of what they’d actually been sitting on, they got down to business.

“Can each projectile be individually targeted?” asked the first technician.

“Yes, Corry,” instructed Hildegard, “up to the limiting circumference of the Via Cereana itself. But the enemy fleet is over six million kilometers away.”

“Meaning?” asked Josh, the second tech as well as Corry’s fiancé.

“Meaning the center of the battle front belongs to our baby,” purred Hildegard, affectionately rubbing one of the control panels.

“Why don’t we just wait till they’re all in the center?”

“We considered that, but the enemy would be so close to our orbiting settlements and rail gun emplacements that they could effectively hide behind them to avoid our fire. Some argued to let them come anyway and destroy our own people to be sure.…”

“Kirk,” coughed Josh.

“The Jerk,” coughed his fiancée. They eyed each other playfully.

“Whoever it was,” finished Hildegard, making no attempt to disabuse the young couple of their suspicions, “it was overruled. Admiral Black said she could gain tactical advantage at six and half million kilometers, and that, my friend”—she looked pointedly at Corry—“is why you’re getting ready to fire.”

“Me?” asked Corry.

“You,” repeated the Technology Secretary with an assured grin. “I’m going out onto the observation decks to watch.”

“But you’re the head of this whole secret … project thingie. You can’t just leave,” implored Josh, sensing his fiancée’s worry.

“You’ll
both
be fine. There’s a reason you’re here now. I picked you for your competence,” she asserted, brow raised, “lingering coughs not withstanding. Plus, the whole thing’s programmed to run automatically. Fleet personnel in two other locations are taking care of loading and targeting. All we have to do is activate the main power relay and it’s good to go … and in case you were wondering why Corry—”

“S’all right. I get it. She’s a particle physicist, and I’m just a lowly programmer.”

“Wrong,” answered Hildegard, “she remembered my lifeday.”

Corry beamed and slapped Josh’s shoulder. “I
told
you.”

Hildegard activated her helmet and stepped through the blast door attached to the station. She then moved out onto the observation deck, which was blessedly empty. There weren’t that many people in the observation decks, because there was quite literally nothing to see. She, along with millions of others, were now viewing something they’d never seen: a Via Cereana devoid of all traffic.

Hildegard couldn’t hear anything in the vacuum of space, but she did feel the vibrations from her bump station as it, along with the 499 others, powered up to fire. She could sense the excitement from those she could see on other decks, some of whom even waved to her. On impulse, she waved back. In a moment, the Long Battle would be won, and quite possibly the war.

*   *   *

Moments later Hildegard watched as a large number of quick flashes left the Via Cereana. There were too many, traveling too quickly to tell, but in that moment, her heart nearly stopped beating.

Oh God, no,
she thought in horror as she ran back to the control room. When she cycled into the room, her first words through her dissolving helmet were, “How fast?”

“Thirty thousand kilometers an hour,” choked out Corry in near despair.

“Jesus,” observed Josh, “those projectiles won’t reach the battle front for…”

“Over two hundred hours,” moaned Hildegard.

Six and half million kilometers from Ceres, Main battlefront, UHFS
Liddel

Admiral Samuel U. Trang looked at the information coming in from his sensor net and was beginning to suspect that he might be the luckiest son of a bitch in the universe.

“Sensor Officer, I want tracking data on those projectiles correlated from every damn ship in the fleet. Was this a test shot—clearing the gun, as it were—or was that their main fire sequence?”

“The power buildup peaked with that shot and is building up again.” His eyes flittered over the display. “Sir, five more projectiles have left the Via Cereana, also at thirty-two kilometers per hour.”

“Compute targets.”

“Done. All fifty-five projectiles are targeted at one ship each in Admiral Jackson’s flotilla. There was a thirty-second turnaround time between shots. Estimated time to impact”—he smiled broadly—“a little under two hundred hours.”

“Comm,” he barked.

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Get me Admirals Jackson and Gupta on a secure line.”

“Link made and secure, sir.”

Trang activated a privacy screen, and his command chair was surrounded by an opaque field that cut off all communication with the outside except for the two figures floating in the small holo-field in front of him.

Gupta spoke first. “Did we just get lucky, or are they screwing with us?”

“Well,” estimated Zenobia, looking tired but steadfast, “speaking for the not-dead faction of this little get-together, I’d have to vote with lucky.”

“Not so fast,” warned Gupta. “This could be a trick. Hell, it probably is.”

Zenobia shook her head. “To what end? Let’s not use our battle-winning weapon because…”

“Because,” observed Trang, face lit with dawning realization, “if I don’t think the weapon is working, I’ll order my fleet to join you in the center and try to split the Alliance forces like we were going to do … before we realized they wanted us in the center.”

“And didn’t take the bait,” chimed in Gupta. “It’s easy to see how this might be the backup. ‘If they don’t go for Omad’s feint, then make it look like the weapon’s not working and get ’em to go in that way.’”

A look of intense calculation spread over Zenobia’s face. “Reasonable. Certainly wouldn’t put it past ’em.”

Trang listened to his subordinates and nodded politely. “Conclusions.”

Gupta spoke first. “I say it’s a trick, Sam, and that we get the hell out here. If they want to give us an extra few minutes playing games, I say we take it. Zenobia may even be able to get some of her ships out of the center while they’re trying to fool us. Maybe we should feint with our fleets. Make it seem like we might be going into the center, while Zenobia powers up and gives herself an atomic kick in the pants.”

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” offered Zenobia.

Gupta’s face contorted into apoplexy. “What?”

“What if their superweapon just doesn’t work?”

“That would be a first,” snorted Gupta. “You willing to take that chance?”

“Fortunately, I don’t have to.” She turned to Trang. “You do.”

Trang smiled knowingly. “Indeed. Please continue.”

“The way I see it, sir, they can’t keep rolling double sixes every time they throw the dice. Think about it. They create a superweapon out of the Via Cereana. But to do that without detection, because they know we have spies, it has to be done in total secrecy; they have to get people to build it, thousands of people in the middle of a war, without any of them really knowing what they’re building. They can’t test it, even once—and simulation doesn’t count. The amazing thing
isn’t
that it doesn’t work, it’s that they managed to get away with this crap so many times in the past.”

“Even if that’s true, sir,” said Gupta, “there’s still no way to know if it’s a trap.”

Trang’s face was illuminated in the green and blue lights emanating from his command module, and his dark, intense eyes appeared as two reflective orbs spitting lines of data from the panels he was viewing. Zenobia, he knew, had been correct in her initial assertion. The decision was his and his alone to make, and this time it would not just be the vast number of lives on the line, it would be the vast number of lives affected if he chose wrong. The lives of those made to live under the yoke of Justin Cord’s twisted concepts of freedom and further enslaved by the religious fanatics his twisted ideology had spawned. He knew what he had to do.